Why is the wealth gap widening

For every boys of primary school age who are out of school, girls are denied the right to education. Underfunded public services. At the same time, public services are suffering from chronic underfunding or being outsourced to private companies that exclude the poorest people. In many countries a decent education or quality healthcare has become a luxury only the rich can afford. It has profound implications for the future of our children and the opportunities they will have to live a better and longer life.

Every day 10, people die because they lack access to affordable healthcare. Each year, million people are forced into extreme poverty due to healthcare costs. Denied a longer life. In most countries having money is a passport to better health and a longer life, while being poor all too often means more sickness and an earlier grave. People from poor communities can expect to die ten or twenty years earlier than people in wealthy areas.

In developing countries, a child from a poor family is twice as likely to die before the age of five than a child from a rich family. Inequality is sexist. They are more likely to be found in poorly paid and precarious employment, supporting the market economy with cheap or free labor.

They are also supporting the state through billions of hours of unpaid or underpaid care work, a huge but unrecognized contribution to our societies and economic prosperity. The growing gap between rich and poor is undermining the fight against poverty, damaging our economies and tearing our societies apart. Yet inequality is not inevitable — it is a political choice. For example, in New Orleans, people living on streets with a higher proportion of Black people were two to three times more likely to die from COVID than streets with white people.

These are also neighbourhoods previously devastated by Hurricane Katrina in Meanwhile, In the erstwhile industrial heartland of the UK, especially Yorkshire and the East Midlands, one in three jobs were lost or are at risk since the pandemic hit.

This compares to London and its commuter belt where fewer than one in five jobs fall in this category. COVID may end up being the most significant development setback of our lifetimes. The pandemic is reversing decades of progress in poverty reduction, the promotion of education, health improvements and overall wellbeing as the livelihoods of billions of people are being destroyed.

There are signs that the pandemic may have pushed at least an additional million people into extreme poverty. What is more, acute hunger doubled in to million people. Indeed, many more people will die of starvation and poverty-related causes than the direct health impacts of COVID This is because roughly a third of workers worldwide, around 2 billion people, work in the informal sector.

Most of these jobs are in developing countries. The livelihoods of an estimated 1. While the stringency of the lockdowns in lower- and medium-income countries match and in many cases exceed those of wealthier countries, their governments are far less able to support their citizens and firms.

When the donor economies contract, so does aid. UK aid, for example , in is down several billion pounds from the previous year. There are dangerous signs that rising inequality could threaten the stability of political systems of nations and undermine their ability to address our shared challenges. The focus now quickly needs to turn to ensuring that we build more inclusive societies at home and abroad.

Among the urgent actions required to reverse inequality are the introduction of more progressive systems of taxation and redistribution and closure of tax havens that allow individuals and companies to avoid their responsibilities to societies. Investments in health, education and infrastructure in deprived areas are particularly vital, as are investments in affordable housing and other measures to increase mobility, allowing individuals to move to dynamic centres which offer jobs and higher incomes.

The short-term impact of the pandemic requires unprecedented measures to support the growing numbers of unemployed, with record low interest rates allowing this to be funded by debt. Most developing countries cannot create more debt, and so much greater levels of international solidarity are needed to assist these countries, including through the writing off of their debt, increases in aid, and ensuring that the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other development institutions are able to meet the needs of this poverty and inequality reduction challenge.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum. High rates of COVID infection are setting Africa back but young innovators across the continent are deploying a social entrepreneurship skillset to fight the pandemic from the grassroots.

I accept. Take action on UpLink. Forum in focus. Fighting systemic racism: 58 companies form global coalition to bring racial justice to the workplace. Read more about this project. Explore context. Explore the latest strategic trends, research and analysis. This article is more than 1 year old. A protest against social inequality in Santiago. A rise in subway fares in the Chilean capital sparked months of civil unrest.

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